For many chefs and restaurateurs, three Michelin stars is considered the highest accolade in the world of fine dining, held by only the best of the best. Developed in the 1920s and 30s by French tyre manufacturers Michelin as a way of advising motorists the best places to pull over for a bite to eat, the Michelin star rating system has since evolved into one of the most sought-after awards in the restaurant business, with an army of secret inspectors reviewing top restaurants the world over.
Marco Pierre White was the youngest 3 Michelin star chef.
Between 1994 and 2002, the world’s youngest 3 Michelin star chef was British chef, restaurateur and ‘enfant terrible,’ Marco Pierre White. Known for his world-class cuisine and unpredictable temper, White’s work ethic was instilled in him from an early age, when his father Frank, also a chef, made him get a milk round before school. Leaving school with no qualifications, White followed his father into the kitchen, landing a job as a kitchen apprentice at the Hotel St George in Harrogate,and later moving to one-Michelin-starred The Box Tree.
His big break came in 1981, when, aged just nineteen, the young White moved to London, with ‘£7.36, a box of books and a bag of clothes’ and began training as a Commis chef under French maestros Michel and Albert Roux at Le Gavroche. He then went on to work for other famous names, including Pierre Koffman, Raymond Blanc and Nico Ladenis, before opening his own restaurant, Harveys, in 1987. Harveys was an instant success, receiving one Michelin star in its opening year, and a second the year later.
In the years that followed, White became chef-patron of The Restaurant Marco Pierre White in the dining room of the former Hyde Park Hotel, where, in 1994, he was awarded a third Michelin star. Aged just 32, this made White the youngest three Michelin star chef at the time, and he was also the first British chef ever to be awarded three Michelin stars. But five years after his achievement, White surprised everyone by handing his Michelin stars back. He later explained that maintaining three-Michelin-star status lacked the excitement of working towards the achievement. The focus had shifted from innovation and risk-taking to painstaking consistency, and White, bored, and feeling that his work was being judged by people with less knowledge than himself, left the kitchen to spend more time with his family.
Since then, he has become a regular face on TV shows like Hell's Kitchen, The Great British Menu, and Australian Master Chef, and he also owns over forty restaurants and brasseries across the UK. Often referred to as ‘The Godfather of British cooking’, White’s advice is much sought-after by younger chefs, and he was due to give a talk at the 2020 Skills for Chefs conference, which has now been postponed until 2021. He has also written several cookbooks, including the ‘ground-breaking’ White Heat, described as part biography and part cookbook, which was recently reprinted as a special 25th anniversary edition.
